My photo “Don’t Know How Much Longer I Can Wait” was added to Flickr Explore

Don't Know How Much Longer I Can Wait - a photograph of a brightly lit interesection in the rain

I believe for the first time since Flickr parent SmugMug tweaked the algorithm, a photo of mine made it into Explore December 30th, 2023.

I took this photo December 28th, 2023, and developed it in my digital darkroom the next evening.

Photo Gear

  • Nikon D7000
  • 35.0 mm f/1.8
  • ƒ/2.8
  • 1/50 (the slowest shutter speed I can reliably use without a tripod)
  • ISO 400

Location: At the intersection of Lincoln, Halsted and Fullerton, in Lincoln Park, Chicago. I chauffeured to a local physical therapist1, and while waiting the hour for the appointment to be over, I walked around the area. It started raining pretty hard, and I was nervous that my camera might get wet but kept on walking, headphones on, listening to music, including to the Bob Dylan outtakes/alternate takes from the Time Out Of Mind Recordings. By the time I took this photo, I was pretty well soaked, but continued on for another mile or so. In my car, I had a raincoat, and a plastic protective sleeve for my camera, however was too lazy to trudge back to properly gird myself against the elements.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

At least I got a few good shots of the amazing city light during a rain storm out of it…

Darkroom (digital): Won’t bore you with every detail of what I did in Photoshop, but I do remember I used a graduated neutral density filter (in emulation) to balance the light, and Alien Skin’s Fuji Reala film (in emulation).

Footnotes:
  1. torn rotator cuff, yikes []

Photograph Titles Continued

Sometimes my system of “mad libbing” my poems1 into photo titles works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe then I should reshuffle somehow, and rename images with the better name. Nobody would even notice but me.

As Close To Yesterday

Self Balance

Reckless To The Point Of Being Honest

Honest To The Point of Imbalance

Footnotes:
  1. and let’s be honest, borrowing other people’s lines too []

Dreams and Artwork

I keep a file on my iPad of dreams that I recall or that wake me up so that I don’t have to recount them publicly to you my remaining readers. I’m making an exception because this particular dream yielded some art that I am proud of. Sunday morning at 4 AM I woke up, thirsty, and in the middle of a dream.

 

In my dream gallery, there was an image that included a layer of golden dots. The next evening, I found this beautiful image on one of my Flickr contacts feed: 

014/365: Effervescence

Does it mean anything? Probably not, but…

Dream notes from Jan, 2018:

I was welcoming family to an art opening of my work (shown in a gallery with some other people). Bigger than Marty’s gallery. And it didn’t seem like photos, seemed like oil paint. One was a study of a man’s face in variations of white – painting was 8 feet tall. Another was a bunch of heads floating on a doorway. “Used real canvas this time” I told George (?). Another had a three dimension component sticking out. Then there was a portrait of a young boy, covered in gold specks. “Not one of mine, but it’s cool”.

I didn’t finish the post in 2018, nor keep my complete thought. I’m pretty sure the art I came up with was this self-portrait collage:

Time Grows On the Cement Self Portrait

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A Few Photos From Guam

…where America’s day begins.

Guam 2019

 

A few photos from my recent trip to Guam, if you are curious.

The URL to the Flickr album is here:https://flic.kr/s/aHsmERFABR, and I think this URL takes you directly to the slide show option.

I have processed about 50% of the photos, I expect I’ll finish going through the good and moderate images before the year is over. Who knows, I may feel a burst of energy and add dozens before you happen to look again.

Attention Customers – Photography taking place in the store today was uploaded to Flickr

Whole Foods may use you as a prop without compensation, and are free to exploit you…or something like that…

At the grand opening of the West Loop Whole Foods in Skybridge.

I wonder if anyone has ever challenged this kind of license? Most people probably don’t even read the sign, just like those software EULA that you click through without reading.

embiggen by clicking
http://flic.kr/p/qR9rKD

I took Attention Customers – Photography taking place in the store today on March 25, 2015 at 12:00PM

and processed it in my digital darkroom on March 25, 2015 at 05:00PM

The Longhorn Saloon – Main Street, Scenic, South Dakota

I kid you not, this *is* Main Street, in Scenic, South Dakota, right outside of the Badlands. Unfortunately, I did not have time to stop in for a beer.

[ maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=Rapid+City,+SD&dad… ]

Next time.

I think the sign says, “Indians Allowed”. Check out the large version to read the lettering (though since I enlarged a small crop, it is a little “soft”)

from 2008. Apparently it is for sale. No, not just the Longhorn Saloon, but the whole town:

For less than the price of a one bedroom apartment in much of Manhattan, you can buy a whole town in South Dakota. The catch: it’s right on the edge of the remote Badlands, 50 miles from the nearest town of any size. The population is 9.

One-time rodeo star Twila Merrill, owner of 12-acre Scenic, South Dakota is selling up due to an illness. According to Coldwell Banker agent Dave Olsen, everything in Scenic (“so-called because it’s beautiful,” he said), is included in the sale: an old-fashioned Western saloon, two shops, and a dancehall, among other buildings. They mostly date back to the town’s 1906 founding, and Olsen hopes the new owner will preserve them as relics of the Old West.

Scenic has been on the market for two months, but there wasn’t much interest beyond local business people until the Rapid City Journal filed a story on the listing on Monday. In the last 24 hours, CNN and ABC got in on the act, and a shocked Olsen told Forbes that the international press is descending on tiny Scenic.

(click here to continue reading Entire South Dakota Town For Sale For $799,000 – Clare O’Connor – Filthy Rich – Forbes.)

Tracy Arm Alaska

Tracy Arm Alaska

Tracy Arm Alaska, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

If I’m not mistaken. Somewhere close in any case.

17% better if viewed in Lightbox:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/5766084280/in/dateposted…

Went back and processed a lot of photos from summer of 2007, including dozens from our Alaskan sojourn. You can see them all here, or if you are patient, click here to start the slideshow (Flash)

Frank Schmidt and Son aka Susie China

Susie China

Susie China, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

store front on Lincoln (?) Ave. Love some of the details – probably meant something to the original owner. The only symbol I’m sure about is the Chicago Y in the upper center – symbolizing the three branches of the Chicago River.

The restaurant itself is closed now too. I should revisit with my better camera

(this was taken in 2006 with a D70 – my current camera is ten times better. Well, at least in name, D7000)

New resident at 833 West Randolph

doorway at 833 West Randolph
doorway at 833 West Randolph, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Former location of Marché, soon to be reopened under new management:

Nellcôte (833 W. Randolph St.; no phone yet), the previously unnamed venture by Jared Van Camp (Old Town Social). The restaurant is named for Villa Nellcôte, the mansion on the Côte d’Azur where the Rolling Stones threw a notorious house party that somehow spawned the album Exile on Main Street.

“Over-the-top luxury without pretense” is how a spokeswoman describes the look. “There will be white Italian marble, wrought-iron gates, [and] cartouche crown molding, but also irreverent accents like bohemian pop art,” she says. The menu will feature a changing-daily lineup of house-made foods using local ingredients, including pizzas and pastas made with house-milled 00 flour. The flour mill is a 9-by-11-foot leviathan that the kitchen was built around, and the finely milled flour will be available for retail sale. Van Camp is targeting November or December for opening.

via
Chicago Mag – Dish

Sounds somewhat intriguing, the proof will be if it is a place that Gram Parsons would hang out in while consuming heroic amounts of opium derivatives.

Harmony in Yellow and Red

Harmony in Yellow and Red

Harmony in Yellow and Red, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

A woman parking her bicycle in front of the Peninsula Hotel, Chicago. I assume she was a guest.

If you look in Lightbox:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/5672020601/in/photostrea…
you can see that her glasses even match her shoes and bike tires.

If I was slightly more brave, I would have interviewed her. I’m sure she had a good story to tell.

Just Biking In the Rain

Just Biking in the Rain

Near Buckingham Palace, on Constitution Road1, in the middle of a fairly hard rain. We were huddled underneath an old, big tree, waiting for the rain to subside, when these ladies whizzed by on a bicycle, laughing hysterically. I was mad at myself that I didn’t get a chance to focus properly, but conversion to black and white (TRI-X 400 emulation) captured the essence of the moment.

Lightbox version

Footnotes:
  1. methinks, I am guessing based on a perusal of Google Maps []